An increasing number of newly constructed networks emerge along with development and mature of communications technologies, and therefore there is a need of implementing both intercommunication and consolidated development of existing and newly developed networks. The existing networks include, for example, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and the Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN). The newly developed networks include, for example, the Next Generation Network (NGN) and the Third Generation (3G) mobile communications network.
The Soft Switch and the Media Gate Way (MGW) implement an Internet Protocol (IP) based bearer in an existing intelligent network implementation solution. Particularly, the soft switch is used to realize signaling processing, call control and service triggering, and the MGW is used to switch a bearer (i.e. a session). An existing traditional narrow-band terminal is still maintained at the user terminal side, that is, the bearer is implemented by way of a Time Division Multiplexing (TDM).
The inventors have found during implementing the invention that an IP bearer is adopted for a core network of a communications network while a narrow-band bearer is adopted for an intelligent network, and thus the different bearers cause complicated management and maintenance of the networks. For example, the different bearers may require a large number of resources to be configured on the MGW, which are intended to perform a bearer switching process, thereby increasing both the investment and configuration complexity. In another example, both the IP and the TDM (e.g. the protocols of E1 and T1) have to be considered for network construction concurrently, so that network construction and both maintenance and management of the networks become more complicated. The introduction of IP realizes all-IP of the core network but a TDM bearer for services is still reserved, and consequently both of the networks have to be maintained and managed concurrently, thereby making it impossible to implement consolidated maintenance and management.